Karen Turner, a fictional character brougt to life
by jxr1
Summary: Karen Turner's life has always been easy - get up, save the galaxy, try not to get killed. But what really happens behind the facade? What is life really like for Karen herself? This is my story. In progress, because it never will be complete.


When I was four years old, I asked Jesus to be my Boss and Savior, and to take charge of my life. In other words, I became "saved." I was excited for a long while. I tried really hard to pray and read Bible stories, and I always felt like Jesus was right there to talk to. As time passed though, I began to change.

I always loved reading. Starting in kindergarten I was famished for every book I could lay my hands on. I especially loved fairy tales. For many children, fairy tales is a stage in life. A time of make believe that passes as kids grow older. But for me, that's where my downfall began.

Fairy tales were fun. They had pictures, and they were adventuresome. They were also gruesome, at least to my five-year-old mind. Snow white and the poisoned comb, Hans and Gretel and the wicked witch who wanted to eat them for supper, these were small things which don't normally affect children, yet they awakened in me a hunger for more. A hunger for adventure, drama, and horror. Normal children's fairy tales led to Grimm's fairy tales. With less pictures, my mind was trained to show in full detail the horrors I read. The witch who was put in a barrel full of nails and driven down the street, the mother and her children nearly put in a pit of snakes and toads, the prince who's ear was staked to a door and torn off. Each of these things were established like full length films in my brain. They guided my mind further and further from God and enticed me to come closer and closer to darker thoughts.

Eventually, my readings affected my Bible time. Instead of reading the new testament, about Jesus and His teachings, which are so important to Christians of this age, I turned to the old testament. I loved reading about Jezabel, who was thrown from a wall and eaten by dogs. Her husband Abel was shot with an arrow, and I pictured his chariot, red with the blood the dogs lapped up by the river. Ehud was my favorite. He stabbed his left-handed dagger into an evil king so badly that he couldn't pull out his dagger and the king's guts spilled all over the floor. Pretty nasty isn't it? But I couldn't get enough of it.

As I grew older, not even eight still, I grew tired of Bible reading. The old testament wasn't as enticing since I couldn't let myself fit it into my movie reels. I thank God that at my young age, He would not allow me to revel in the torture of His saints, or in the horrors of the cross. By His grace I still felt sadness when reading of the crucifixion.

But that created a dilemma for me. Unable to enjoy the horror stories in the Bible like I wanted to, I turned to fiction. Nancy Drew was a start. I loved reading the parts where she was captured, tied up, or locked in a closet. Eventually I grew bored though. I read Unicorns of Balinor, with Arianna and the evil Shifter, I tried the Hardy boys series, and I read hundreds of other books, some which I should never have touched, trying to satisfy my newfound thirst for torture, drama, and action.

Years passed. I was zooming through teen fiction before I turned twelve, and I haunted the libraries for new fiction. I never read all the stories in any library, but I was always looking for something new. Something stimulating, with another painful scene I had never read. I kept my mind pure to a point – I never deliberately read about sex, murder, or other more, in my mind, "sinful" literature, and I closed the book as soon as a scene beyond a kiss popped up, but I could never get enough torture.

Eventually the libraries ran out of stimulants for my raging mind. I started making up my own stories in my head. Movie reels ran through my brain as I pictured complex plots filled with stories of betrayal, loss, and pain. I got so good at my pictographic mind that I could do housework and "watch a movie" at the same time. I could zone out entire church services and school sessions, just spending time changing the channels in my brain from one plot to another, editing this version, spicing up another one, darting from plots on Star wars, to lord of the rings, to Eragon, or usually to the latest book I had been reading. I was perfectly caged in my own mind of war and pain, and I was happy with it.

Over time though, I realized I was missing something in life. I realized I could no longer pray. I missed having a higher being to hold on to. I wanted God, but He no longer seemed to be there for me.

I fell into a depression, a depression that held me captive for several years. I would lay awake at night, crying and pleading with God to show Himself to me or kill me. But I wasn't doing anything to help Him show Himself to me. I still kept ignoring Him. I neglected my Bible, started stealing petty things like gum and change from my siblings, I lied to my parents and continued reading about torture. These things seem so petty compared to the real crimes committed daily, but for me these were crimes of the greatest nature, and they put up a self-made barrier between me and God.

Finally when I was fourteen I felt like life was looking up. I started to read my Bible again, though I had to force myself to read more than a chapter in the Psalms at night for a while. I started to pray, mostly asking for God's forgiveness, but praying nonetheless. Over my fifteenth summer I increased my Bible reading and found to my joy that I was beginning to enjoy church services again, and I didn't hate it whenever my Mom talked about God. Things were still tough though. There would be weeks at a time when I avoided any thoughts of God. The only Bible time I would spend would be a chapter at night in hopes to stave away nightmares. Then there would be good times when I would remember God's grace and try to serve Him.

I do not tell you this because I am past it though. I tell you this because it is still a battle today. For sixteen years of my life I saw God as only a picture – He was Jesus, the kind father, and I believed in Him, but He was still just a picture in my mind, just like all my stories – yet in this case the picture was a reality. Now however God has been able to free me from that picture. I can "see" Him as God – not a part of my story life. I still have some trouble with my Bible reading because it is not the instigating action like the stories I can find in the fiction section of a library. I still love to read about torture, and you might have seen some of that if you read my stories before they were deleted.

But God is slowly beginning to free my mind. On April 17, 2010, I deleted every single one of my stories on fan . I had a wonderful series going about a teen aged girl named Karen Turner and her many adventures time warping across galaxies and visiting Star Wars, Eragon, Naruto, and other movies, books, and TV series. Karen Turner was the girl I could never be, but she wasn't the girl God had created. He created me the way He wanted me to be – a girl who may not see herself as beautiful, but whom is loved more than anything by her Creator, despite her many flaws. On April 17, 2010, God broke off from me Karen Turner, yet another thing holding me back from Him. Karen may never fully leave my mind, and I still continue to enjoy movie reels going through my head, but neither will ever by manifested on paper again. God still has so much work to do on me to free me up for His plans, but I thank Him so much for bringing me to where I am today. He has brought me to where I am willing to let Him work on me, instead of fighting Him away.

I hope that those who read this might someday come to the revelation I did. Yes, you may be dirty. Yes, you might be fighting God off. The cool thing? He'll fight back. He'll fight for you, and He won't give up on you, no matter how many times you tell Him to back off. I should know – I was telling Him to back off and leave my life alone for probably twelve years. Sometimes I still want to leave God in the background and live my own life. But He still keeps coming back and showing me just how much He loves me. I owe my life to Him, though I still have so far to go before I realize how truly gratified I should be. But I'll get there, because I know God hasn't given up on me yet, and He never will. Maybe someday, those who read this will stop fighting Him for a minute. Maybe they will also get to realize that God hasn't given up because He loves them too much to let them hurt themselves by going their own way. Maybe if they give God a chance, they'll also get to realize His unfailing love.


End file.
